Hey guys... been really terrible at keeping this thread up to date! I apologize for that but I do have hopes to continue it!
I learned so many little things that I’m almost guaranteed to forget to share but I’ll do my best!
First off I finished my first cycle about 2 weeks ago with relatively lack luster results but more on that later.
My last update was in the final days of veg I believe, right after that I decided removing all the leafs might be a good idea lmao! Not really, I was jut super high and seen some sort of fly eating away and a leaf and paniced lol!
The other thing that happened was all the leafs began yellowing I’m assuming from lack of nutrition since after I top dressed with some barley is got better, but I caught it way late.
Drying went I think decent for my first time. I had a couple branches I messed up and didn’t make hangers for but I made it work.
My only struggle I had was keeping enough humidity in the room. I was scared if I brought it above 45ish percent I might be mold since it’s such a tiny room with a humidifier in it.
Trimming was a great learning process, it took me a few hours but towards the end I was getting “decent” and going faster. I way over trimmed the first half, and the weed is a too dry so if I bumped it some of the flower would break off.
As for the weed itself, not the best quality lol. Very stretchy not dense at all, the high is nice but I pulled it a little too late so it’s a little more “medicated”. The smoke itself is actually smooth which is awesome.
All in all, I did damn near everything wrong, chose a strain that’s notoriously hard to grow for my first grow (og kush) and still grew something!
I’m preparing for my second cycle right now. I got worms from my back yard just last night. I have alph alpha seeds on the way and will be growing that a week or so prior to putting my second seed into the soil. I also have the leafs that managed to stay in tact as soil cover for now.
I’ll be growing another og kush auto flower just for comparisons sake.
And these are the changes I plan on making and explanations for why.
Focus on climate! For me I’m in a tiny room that it tempature controlled by my house, but my humidity drops crazy low at night and almost normal during the morning and I have no idea why but my entire house is this way. which means sometimes my rh would be 29 and if I forgot to turn the humidifier off I would walk in and see 70% rh! My rh was so hard on the plants that every matured leaf had their tips curled and dead
Do the minimum defoliation! This seems so damned obvious and is, but if you’re me this clearly isn’t the case! I like smoking in the room with my plant and going through and checking throughout the plant making sure everything is good. When I smoke too much, every time I decide taking a few leafs off is a good idea... so I need to stop that lmao!
Always use pruners or clippers to defoliate when you need too! I was twisting a leaf off and damage the entire branch by fibers that weren’t broken off. I’m sure once I get better I may break my own rule but for now this is needed!
Cut the bottom branches off there were atleast four or 5 branches that grew multiple feet long on the inside of the plant and produced nearly nothing. Surely it’s less energy on the plant, hopefully the stress won’t be too much.
Use a scrog or something to aid growth, atleast in flower. I think it will just produce better quality and make the plant work less.
Top dress/feed every 10days. I’m using mofo’s amendment schedule I should’ve done this from the start but didn’t!
I have some photos I’ll post a little later, it’s nothing impressive I promise! Lol
Nice to hear from you again brother and we all live and learn, its the nature of life itself.
The action plan you have seems legit buddy, dont over stress your head tho, no use growing meds if the process itself is adding to potential radical accumulation. Stressed minds are ultimately the most harmful for the human body.
I suggest you might want to spend time drinking Saffron tea instead of smoking with your plants. I think saffron is a better drug for the mind where we are seeking relaxation and buoyancy without neglecting memory. There is no research on cannabis that i have found, that it impairs your decision making ability, at least where that research itself doesn't appear flawed by methodology, but I dont smoke around my plants just so i dont forget to do things.
I also have task sheets mate, sounds geeky but its a hangover from farming school that I always do instinctively now, whenever I consider planting anything! I am gad i do, it helps me to trouble shoot, prevents me doubling up or missing jobs. I plot all of this on a growing schedule, this is just an annual calendar mate :)
Plants are like clocks, they can be used to remind us time is passing. If we dont do things on time, we may as well not bother as often times protein cascades and related biological pathways induced, mean the doors are shut to our toolkits. Secondary paths are activated to compensate for less than perfect conditions, and our interference is then not welcome unless we too have evolved to consider the switch in process our previous tardiness may have encouraged, and so what we might do right in the moment to boost alternate growth induced pathways rooted in survival can be very counter intuitive to that we have learned before.
I agree inside lighting requires a finer hand for plant pruning. A better understanding of plant training techniques to maximize the sweet spot of effective light and our plants time in it is time well spent.
Removing branches that fall outside of the sweet spot will give your plant more energy to invest where the light does make a difference. removing too many sun collecting leaves is always a bad idea given how critical leaves are to plant life
Unlike our sun, any man made light has serious limitations when faced with any distance to travel. the light 1ft away from the bulb is substantially reduced, where a foot in outside light makes no difference at all.
Use a light meter to map out the sweet spots in your space. use technology to improve the areas you can, eg using Mylar based reflective materials or other which will help control the losses. added, leaves in the shade, versus those in the light is how plants see or at east understand where they are. if we remove too much we simply confuse our plant and this causes widespread chaos. No more than 30% ever IMO
Understand it is environment that grows decent plants. We can help it with bottles and training, but we cant grow gems where the environment isnt playing its role, or we dont have the budget to decide ourselves :)
Its a blessing plants are so determined to grow :)
